Archive | 2004

Development Tools Agreement Marks Key Milestone in Sun’s Wall Street Strategy

Rogue Wave Software, a division of Quovadx, Inc. (Nasdaq: QVDX) and Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), today announced an alliance designed to help developers easily migrate legacy applications to Sun’s Solaris 10 Operating System (OS). Rogue Wave Software will certify its entire suite of high-performance development tools to the Solaris 10 OS, for both SPARC(R) and AMD Opteron processor-based systems. These certified tools will allow organizations, particularly in the financial services, telecommunications and government sectors, to both migrate their existing Windows applications and to develop new applications that will take advantage of the performance and reliability of Solaris 10.

“Sun is working aggresively to secure a competitive market advantage with Solaris 10. With its support of multiple platforms, superior performance, and competitive pricing model, we believe this new version of Solaris will quickly make a mark as a key operating system for our customers, particularly on Wall Street,” said Thomas Gaunt, vice president of worldwide sales and strategic alliances, Rogue Wave Software. “Many of the applications being migrated today by financial services companies were developed using the Rogue Wave® SourcePro® C++ Suite. With some financial services companies having upwards of 200 million lines of code, it’s imperative that their developers have the tools they need to speed the migration process.”

Through the agreement, Rogue Wave Software will port and certify its enterprise C++ development toolkits including SourcePro® Core, SourcePro® Net, SourcePro® DB, SourcePro® Analysis and Rogue Wave® LEIF on the Solaris 10 OS, both 32 and 64-bit. The agreement includes support, ongoing certification, quality assurance and regression testing.

“Financial Services customers are telling us they need Rogue Wave Software on Solaris 10 for the x86 platform,” said Stuart Wells, senior vice president for Sun’s Financial Services Industry practice. “Rogue Wave’s products play a critical role in the middleware infrastructure segment, and our alliance with them is a key milestone in our strategy to provide Wall Street customers with the tools they need to make this transition as smooth as possible.”

Availability

For more information on the Sun and Rogue Wave offering, http://www.roguewave.com/corp/press/articles/Sun_solutions_brief_final.pdf.

About Rogue Wave Software

Rogue Wave Software, a division of Quovadx, Inc. (Nasdaq: QVDX), provides reusable software components and services that facilitate high-performance application development. Today, more than 300,000 developers at some of the world’s leading companies have used Rogue Wave® products to develop enterprise-level applications. Rogue Wave Software operates throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. For more information, please visit http://www.roguewave.com.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Rogue Wave and SourcePro are registered trademarks of Quovadx, Inc. All other company and product names mentioned may be trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.

Single-Vendor Strategy Integrates SAP Solutions for Human Resources, Replenishment and Sales Forecasting Solutions on Sun UltraSPARC® and Solaris Systems and Storage

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) and OfficeMax(R) Incorporated, today announced that OfficeMax, a global, multi-channel provider of office products and services, has selected Sun as the exclusive supplier of its UNIX based IT systems, extending a multi-year relationship between the companies. OfficeMax will integrate their SAP(R) solutions for human resources, finance, replenishment, warehouse management and back-office functionality on the Solaris Operating System. Utilizing its Sun and SAP solutions , OfficeMax will have greater business flexibility with a highly scalable infrastructure that will enable a closer alignment of business resources.

To drive profitability and stay ahead of the demand curve, OfficeMax adapts the tight control of its supply and distribution chain to its dynamic business, so that products can be tracked from consumer order to shipment, then replenished efficiently. This business model requires the ability to reallocate infrastructure resources where and when required. SAP software on Sun systems helps the company make the right product available at the right time, in the right location. Sun’s technology has played a key role in assuring the reliability and performance required of OfficeMax’s infrastructure.

Using Sun’s iForce(SM) Competency Center for SAP Solutions, Sun and OfficeMax developed a system architecture that will meet the needs of a dynamically changing business model. Key criteria in choosing Sun technology was based on Sun’s ability to align resources based on OfficeMax’s changing business needs and desire to respond rapidly to changes in customer demand.

“In an age of disposable technology, Sun systems enable resource management according to changing business needs, without changing a company’s basic infrastructure,” said Bill Cook, vice president, U.S. Sales, Sun Microsystems. “Solaris achieves this through unmatched scalability. Sun’s Uniboard packaging accomplishes this by transforming the board into a modular unit, allowing resources to shift without changing parts or removing hardware. Along with significant savings, this enables near-zero downtime-a key advantage in today’s highly competitive retail environment.”

Currently, OfficeMax runs its open systems almost entirely on Solaris powered UltraSPARC(R) IV servers – the Sun Fire 25K – and the Sun Fire V1280 coupled with Sun StorEdge 9960. Key retail applications are employed in the data centers and OfficeMax expects to grow up to 100 terabytes in their data warehouse. The company operates 1,000 superstores and delivery centers in the United States and sells its products on the Web at OfficeMax.com, via direct mail catalogs, and through its nationwide commercial sales force.

“Running SAP solutions on Sun systems enables OfficeMax to adapt our enterprise IT landscape on a weekly basis in support of promotions or seasonal campaigns,” said Kevin Stack, vice president, Infrastructure, OfficeMax. “This ability for rapid updates is critical in our ongoing efforts to deliver exceptional customer satisfaction across all of our markets.”

Future plans also include evaluating the Sun Infrastructure Solution for N1 Grid for SAP Solutions – a mix of products, technologies and services expertise to help SAP customers derive significant cost savings by further optimizing the infrastructure of its SAP solutions-based environment. The Sun Infrastructure Solution provides customers the technology, methodology and guidance to help accelerate deployment of N1 Grid technology with reduced customization and faster time to value.

About OfficeMax

OfficeMax is a leader in both business-to-business and retail office products distribution. OfficeMax delivers an unparalleled customer experience — in service, in product, in time savings, and in value – through a relentless focus on its customers. The company provides office supplies and paper, print and document services, technology products and solutions, and furniture to large, medium and small businesses and consumers. OfficeMax customers are served by more than 40,000 associates through direct sales, catalogs, Internet and nearly 950 superstores. The business had sales of $6.6 billion in the first nine months of 2004 and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol OMX. More information can be found at www.officemax.com.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Sun Fire, Solaris, Sun StorEdge, N1, iForce and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks, registered trademarks, or services marks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. SAP, and all other SAP product and service names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries around the world.

Solaris 10 OS and the Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Database 10g demonstrate extreme scalability using the Oracle Applications Standard Batch benchmark

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) announced today that the combination of the Oracle(R) E-Business Suite 11i9, Oracle Database 10g running on Sun Fire E4900 systems with the Solaris 10 OS and Sun StorEdge 6100 series storage arrays achieved a record throughput of 1.27 Million order lines per hour using the Oracle Applications Standard Batch benchmark. The batch benchmark includes the High Volume Order Import (HVOP) program, which is one of the batch components of the Oracle eBusiness Suite Order Management module. The HVOP benchmark focuses exclusively on meeting the high order volumes originating from the electronic channels, such as consumer and business web sites, B2B exchanges, and EDI/XML.

HVOP represents one of the core components of the order-to-cash business flow. HVOP validates the interface data and creates orders in the Oracle E-Business Suite. HVOP then books these orders and advances them to the shipping state. The benchmark performed the standard data validation and security checks. The order lines were priced using the Oracle Advanced Pricing feature and then booked. The order line flow automatically scheduled the lines from the warehouse and advanced the orders to the ship line activity. This benchmark result demonstrates the high performance and scalability of the Oracle E-Business Suite on the Sun platform. This benchmark demonstrates that HVOP can scale to the needs of customers; especially for those customers requiring high order volume throughput.

This benchmark result sets an industry pace for the newest component of the Oracle Applications Standard Benchmark (OASB) kit, the High Volume Order Processing (HVOP). These scalability tests conducted by Sun and Oracle provide customers with the opportunity to observe the performance characteristics of the Oracle eBusiness Suite on 10g and Sun’s first generation of Throughput Computing, UltraSPARC(R) IV processor-based systems under real-world conditions in order to provide sizing and capacity planning information.

Key Findings

The Oracle OASB HVOP benchmark test was performed on a Sun Fire E4900 server with 12 UltraSPARC-IV processors at 1.2GHz running the Oracle E-Business Suite 11i9 (11.5.9), Oracle Database 10g, the Solaris 10 OS, and two Sun StorEdge 6100 series storage arrays. It also demonstrates that the Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Database 10g on the latest Sun Systems and Solaris platform can scale to the needs of customers. For additional information, please go to http://www.oracle.com/apps_benchmark/index.html

The benchmark was generated in the Enterprise Technology Center located in Menlo Park, CA, to emulate typical server performance for high order volume throughput.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, Sun StorEdge, Sun Fire, and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates.

Sun Microsystems today announced a relationship with a key technology partner in its strategy to develop next generation ATCA (Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture) blade server products based on the latest industry specifications from PICMG. Sun is collaborating with Pigeon Point Systems, an industry leading supplier of management sub-systems for PICMG standard blade technology, to create low cost, high performance ATCA blade server products to address next generation high throughput telecom services.

With this relationship, Sun is accelerating its development of the next generation Netra ATCA blade server product family, targeted for 2005 availability. Announced at ITU Telecom Asia in Sept, 2004, Sun plans to provide a complete ATCA blade server solution, supporting both UltraSPARC(R) and Opteron(R) blades as well as Solaris and CG Linux in the same system.

The ATCA specifications provide a high performance, high bandwidth telecom blade architecture, designed to meet the needs of next generation high-throughput telecom service applications, such as 3G wireless networks, unified media servers and voice over IP (VoIP) solutions.

“The ATCA standard is beginning to show significant momentum in the market, and Sun is taking an aggressive approach in developing and deploying a complete and advanced ATCA solution,” said Raju Penumatcha, VP Netra Systems and Networking (NSN), Sun Microsystems. “By partnering with industry leading technology partners like Pigeon Point Systems, Sun plans to deliver a low cost, highly reliable ATCA blade server offering that will meet the most stringent requirements of our network equipment provider customers.”

Sun’s current blade system management architecture, used in Sun’s Netra cPCI and cPSB blade servers , has saved customers significant time and money in deploying and maintaining highly reliable and manageable telecom blade products. The new ATCA platform will leverage the same blade system management architecture and software while providing a higher level of reliability and manageability for network equipment provider customers.

“NTT Comware has abundant experience and proven results in using telecom server products, including Sun’s Netra CT cPCI server, for many years,” stated a NTTComware Executive, a major Japanese network service provider. “We are excited about Sun’s new ATCA blade server products and plan to evaluate the products for developing our next generation network system platform.”

Pigeon Point Systems delivers fully customizable, off-the-shelf hardware and software components for industry leading blade system management.

Pigeon Point Systems will supply its IPM Sentry Board Management Reference (BMR) designs for incorporation into Sun’s ATCA blades and its IPM Sentry Shelf Management Mezzanine (ShMM) module as the core for the shelf level management of Sun’s systems. Both subsystems deliver demonstrated ATCA compliance and interoperability and will serve as an effective foundation for Sun’s highly reliable standards-based shelf and blade management technologies. Sun will port its standards-based blade management software, Managed Object Hierarchy (MOH), to Pigeon Point Systems’ IPM Sentry ShMM, creating a redundant, highly reliable ATCA system management architecture which reduces OAM development costs and time to market.

“Pigeon Point Systems’ IPM Sentry subsystems are created and backed by widely recognized experts and leaders in PICMG’s management standards. These subsystems are also designed to meet the high expectations of network equipment providers in other areas, such as reliability and field upgradeability,” said Mark Overgaard, President, Pigeon Point Systems. “We are delighted to be collaborating closely with Sun to bring the latest standards-based management subsystems technologies to Sun’s ATCA blade server products to meet the most demanding customer requirements.”

About Pigeon Point Systems

Pigeon Point Systems (PPS) provides products and services that enable cost-effective management of standards-based platformsùincluding AdvancedTCA, AdvancedMC (AMC), CompactTCA and CompactPCIùand is a leader in the definition of those platforms. With its IPM Sentry shelf management products, PPS offers the first shelf management building blocks that compatibly support AdvancedTCA and CompactPCI, with similar support for CompactTCA to come. The IPM Sentry board management productsùalso the first off-the-shelf offerings in the industryùenable compact, cost-effective management subsystems for boards and other FRUs, including AMC carriers and AMCs. PPS is a leader in the AdvancedTCA, AdvancedMC and CompactTCA subcommittees and is active in many other technical subcommittees of PICMG. For more information about PPS, visit their web site at www.pigeonpoint.com or call their headquarters at 831-438-1565.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Netra, and Solaris are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the US and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. Opteron is a trademark or registered trademark of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

Industry Leaders Continue Collaboration to Help Commercial Enterprises Use the Power of Grid Computing

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) and Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq: ORCL) continue their joint collaboration around a set of integrated Grid computing solutions designed to help commercial enterprises harness the power of Grid computing and to achieve better utilization of existing IT assets.

With the Grid computing market estimated to reach as much as $12 billion by the year 2007(1), Sun and Oracle are committed to providing customers with next generation data center solutions on both 32- and 64-bit platforms, backed by the power and innovation of Sun’s Solaris Operating System (OS). Today, information technology executives are more frequently considering Grid computing solutions for commercial enterprise computing applications including stock transactions, payroll management, sales orders, deliveries and inventory control. In fact, nearly two-thirds of companies surveyed earlier this year indicated that they were already using–or were interested in using–Grid technology(2) for these repetitious and storage intensive operations.

To help lower the barrier of entry to Grid computing, the two companies created a Grid Reference Architecture for Oracle(R) 10g software, providing customers with a set of tested and tuned guidelines for implementing a Grid computing solution. This documented proof-of-concept deployment architecture can decrease the complexity of decision-making and deployment, while increasing reliability and lowering risk for potential customers. The Grid Reference Architecture was created jointly by Sun and Oracle engineers and has been proven to reduce total-cost-of-ownership, while saving implementation time.

“Many of today’s data centers can be described as cost-ineffective, due to low utilization of resources,” said Bjorn Andersson, director of Grid marketing at Sun Microsystems, Inc. “Together with Oracle, we continue to provide customers proven building blocks for Grid based on Sun Fire systems, the Solaris OS, Sun StorEdge, software and services, which can easily be configured to transform poor-performing data centers into a competitive weapon.”

To keep costs low and continue to provide advanced technologies, Sun recently announced Sun Cluster and Oracle RAC support on shared file systems, as well as a new Sun Cluster Oracle RAC SVM Edition that enables powerful volume management of Oracle RAC deployments. This comprehensive Sun and Oracle solution helps ensure that customer deployments receive the highest levels of reliability, availability and support.

“We are committed to providing customers with choice and flexibility when it comes to Grid computing,” said Prem Kumar, vice president, Server Technologies, Oracle Corporation. “Our work with Sun around Oracle Database 10g continues to focus on delivering solutions that maximize asset utilization and decrease overall IT costs—a value proposition that resonates with organizations of all sizes, in all industries.”

Oracle and Sun have worked together for 20 years to deliver secure, reliable and scalable enterprise-class data centers to more than 70,000 customers around the world. The two companies are board members of the Enterprise Grid Alliance (EGA), a consortium of leading vendors and user companies focused on developing enterprise Grid solutions and accelerating the deployment of Grid computing in the enterprise. With a shared commitment to open, standards-based computing, Oracle and Sun deliver optimal performance, innovation and value to the customer through joint engineering efforts, sales and service. More information about today’s announcements and the Oracle Sun alliance is available at www.sun.com/oracle or www.oracle.com/sun.

More details on the Grid Reference Architecture are available at www.sun.com/oracle/grid

About Sun at Oracle OpenWorld

Join Sun Microsystems at Oracle OpenWorld (Booth #1702) to hear how customers are benefiting from Grid computing solutions provided by Sun and Oracle. Visit Sun’s online press kit at (http://sun.com/aboutsun/media/presskits/oow2004/) to view all press releases, presentation schedules and product background.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, Java, Sun StorEdge, Sun Fire, and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the US and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Oracle Corporation is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

(1) IDC: “The Role of Grid Computing in the Coming Innovation Wave,” J. Humphreys, M. Melenovsky, March 2004 (2) Forrester: “Grid Gets Big, But the Term is Confusing,” F. Gillett, May 2004

Sun Platform Meets Industry Challenge with Flexible and Low-Cost Architecture Deployed at more than 1000 Customers, Including Claria, Solectron, TeleCels, and University of Nevada

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) and Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq: ORCL) today announced that some of the world’s largest business intelligence data warehouse (BIDW) systems run Oracle(R) Database on the Sun platform to achieve greater business agility and performance, while reducing overall operational costs. Thousands of worldwide customers such as Claria, one of the world’s largest Oracle Data Warehouse and Sun deployments; Solectron (NYSE: SLR); TeleCels; and the University of Nevada, Reno are relying on the seamless, scalable 64-bit Sun architecture to power their multi-terabyte class business intelligence (BI) networks.

Sun’s complete offering for the BIDW industry builds on the enterprise-class, virtually unparalleled security and scalability of the industry’s #1 UNIX(R) Operating System, Solaris(tm). This includes the Solaris platform on AMD Opteron, SPARC(R) and Intel processor-based systems, Sun StorEdge storage systems, and spanning the Java Enterprise System and Java Desktop System. Oracle Database 10g provides a single, integrated database engine for scalable and high performing data warehousing implementations. Oracle simplifies the maintenance of ever-expanding data warehouses with a single management interface, self-tuning, and self-diagnosing features.

“Oracle and Sun have worked together for many years at the deepest technical levels to create powerful and reliable decision support systems,” said Ray Roccaforte, vice president of Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing, Oracle Corporation. “Oracle Database offers performance and scalability with superior security and reliability to support the world’s largest data warehouses.”

Because customers need solutions that scale with business growth and change, Sun offers the iForce BIDW Competency Center where system design can be sized and evaluated before deployment with the assistance of Sun and its ISV/SIs partners, reducing costs, risk and time-to-service of an effective BIDW solution. The Solaris OS – optimized data center program enables customers to gain quicker access to information and improve business intelligence, advance data center efficiency and to achieve 70 percent scale out utilization at a fraction of the cost.

“Oracle has shown dramatic growth in the Very Large Data Warehousing (VLDW) market, and customers report that Sun servers and the Solaris Operating System provide a highly scalable and reliable platform for their large-scale data warehouses,” said Richard Winter, President, Winter Corporation.

Customers

Sun and Oracle are providing business intelligence data warehouse solutions to customers around the world and gaining new market opportunities through the unique strengths of the Sun and Oracle products and services. New customers consist of leading organizations such as Claria, Solectron, TeleCels, the University of Nevada, Reno and others across a variety of industries including education, financial services, government, retail, telecommunications and manufacturing.

“Claria requires a solution that ensures scalability, continuous uptime, and excellent data life cycle management,” said Oswald D’Sa, CIO Claria Corp. “Sun and Oracle have been instrumental in revolutionizing our business, leveraging Sun Fire 6800, E15k, E25k and an Oracle Database to successfully move us from multiple disjointed databases onto a consolidated data warehouse and data mart that empower Claria to do our best work for our market of tens of millions of users and over 1000 advertisers. The possibility of consolidating large amounts of data for in-depth analysis using Sun servers, Sun StorEdge arrays, and Oracle 9i gives us significant business advantage.” Claria Corporation is the leader in online behavioral marketing headquartered in Redwood City, CA.

“Solectron is a global company that requires a global view of its businesses, which is why business intelligence data warehousing is so critical to our success,” said Senthil Rajamanickam, enterprise integration leader, at Solectron. “With our new Oracle Data Warehouse running on Sun – including Sun Fire servers running Solaris and Sun StorEdge systems – and with the assistance of Sun Services and the iForce(SM) Business Intelligence Data Warehousing (BIDW) Global Competency Center team, we achieved benefits beyond our initial scope. We increased the performance of our data warehouse by 200 percent, substantially reduced the footprint in our data center by 60 percent, and reduced our operational costs by 40 percent.” Headquartered in Milpitas, CA, Solectron Corporation is a leading electronics manufacturing services (EMS) provider with operations on five continents and locations in more than 15 countries.

Join Sun Microsystems at Oracle OpenWorld (Booth #1702) to hear how customers are benefiting from business intelligence data warehouse solutions provided by Sun and Oracle. Sun will present “Managing the Data Explosion: Sun Infrastructure Powers Oracle Data Warehouses from a Customer Perspective” on December 7 at 3:30PM in room #3000. Visit Sun’s online press kit at http://sun.com/aboutsun/media/presskits/oow2004/ to view all press release, presentation schedules and product background.

About Oracle

Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) is the world’s largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademark or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the US and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates.

Sun Microsystems Selected as Best Server Solution for Renewed Commitment to and New Range of Products for Wall Street

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today was named the Best Server Solution in the 2004 Waters Editorial Awards for its innovative use of technology in the financial services sector. As a testament to Sun’s “Take Wall Street by Storm” campaign, this prestigious recognition honored the company’s continued dedication to offering best-in-class solutions for the industry’s leading businesses.

“The editors of Waters are pleased to present the award to Sun for its complete portfolio of new products that Wall Street appears to have embraced over the past twelve months,” said Phil Albinus, editor of Waters. “Sun’s adoption of Linux has peaked the interest of financial leaders to warrant this esteemed title of ‘Best Server Solution.”

“It is an honor for Sun to receive this coveted industry award from Waters, a publication that defines the challenges that the top global financial services confront,” said Stuart Wells, senior vice president of financial services worldwide, Sun Microsystems. “Sun’s new family of AMD Opteron-based servers, running either Solaris x86 or Linux, and its entire line of Sun Fire servers, continues to give our customers a leg up on the competition. This award underscores Sun’s leadership in one of the world’s most demanding markets.”

The Waters Editorial Awards acknowledge bold business maneuvers, innovative uses of technology and achievements that supercede the industry standard, over the past year. Editors of Waters and its sister publications, Dealing with Technology, Inside Market Data and Hedge Fund & Investment Technology selected the top technologies, services and people behind the most impressive projects on Wall Street and the global financial community. Waters has been relied on by financial technology professionals worldwide for the past 11 years for focused, in-depth coverage of financial market data and technology.

Demanding Customers Demand Sun

In 2004, Sun launched new servers powered by UltraSPARC(R) and AMD Opteron processors that deliver industry-leading throughput and price/performance, including:

• The Sun Fire V490 and Sun Fire V890 servers, based on UltraSPARC IV Chip Multithreading (CMT) technology, double the throughput of Sun’s existing four- and eight-way systems at the same price point, and outperform equivalent systems from HP and IBM.
• The Sun Fire V40z 4-way server with the Solaris OS, which also runs Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux or Windows operating systems with Microsoft Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) certifications.

The Opteron-based Sun Fire servers posted several world-record industry benchmarks in both performance and price/performance for the most demanding 32 and 64-bit workloads. For example:

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, Sun Fire and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company Ltd. Specifications are subject to change without notice.

SPEC[TM] and the benchmark names SPEC OMPM2001[TM], SPECweb99_SSL and SPECjAppServer2002[TM] are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. For the latest benchmark results, visit http://www.spec.org

(1)As of November 23, 2004: Two Sun Fire V20z application servers, each equipped with two AMD Opteron Model 250 2.4 GHz processors, and a Sun Fire V40z database server, equipped with four AMD Opteron Model 850 2.4 GHz processors, delivered a result of 1363.88 TOPS@MultipleNode with a price/performance of US$82.74/TOPS@MultipleNode for the SPECjAppServer2002 benchmark.
(2)The Sun Fire V40z server, configured with four AMD Opteron™ processors Model 850 achieved a SPEC OMPM2001 result of 8,694 using SUSE Linux 9 and the compiler suite from The Portland Group(PGI). Comparison is based upon SPECompM2001 benchmark results for 4 processor (4 thread) systems published on www.spec.org as of November 23, 2004.
(3)As of November 23, 2004, the Sun Fire V20z server, powered by 2×2.4GHz AMD Opteron processors and running Zeus Web Server 4.2 on SLES8 SP3 (64bit) OS has achieved the best performance of 2,500 conforming connections, among all 2 processor (single core)systems on SPECweb99_SSL benchmark.

Lead-with-Innovation Strategy Pays Off as Customers Around the World Choose Sun for Everything from Chip Multithreading and Utility Computing to Solaris 10 and Java

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced that in 2004 it rolled out the most innovative systems portfolio in the company’s 20-plus year history. Through its quarterly Network Computing launch cycle, Sun has demonstrated its commitment to delivering customer value through breakthrough Network Computing solutions that address critical business needs like complexity, interoperability, scalability and simplicity. The company’s totally refreshed product and services lineup is already changing industry dynamics and being applauded by customers and partners around the world.

“The breadth of Sun’s lineup today is stronger than at any time in Sun’s history and our competition is sitting up and taking note,” said Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s president and chief operating officer. “Sun’s unwavering dedication to R&D enables us to supply our customers with technology and innovative pricing models that give them a competitive edge. The future of Network Computing will be driven by those willing to buck the status quo, conquer existing cultural barriers and shift capital away from today’s fixed-cost models and closed systems.”

Schwartz adds: “As bandwidth commoditizes, companies are leveraging the vast economies of scale delivered by outside providers of standards-based ‘Net services such as computing power, applications, and internet infrastructure. Sun’s transparent pricing, coupled with vendor-neutral technology, is providing the roadmap for our customers to get ahead of this trend and be the leaders of tomorrow.”

Over the past year, Sun has introduced hundreds of innovative products and services in its quarterly launch cycle that have helped customers reduce the cost and complexity of doing business over the network:

• The Launch of the Solaris 10 Operating System. With over 600 new innovations including ZFS file storage, Dynamic Tracing (D-Trace), containers and the best UNIX(R) to Linux interoperability, Solaris 10 sets a new benchmark for operating system performance, vendor neutrality and security. Sun also added 140 business software applications for Solaris 10 to the already 12,000 plus available to Solaris users.
• Sun Fire Systems Refresh with UltraSPARC(R) IV and Opteron. Optimized for chip multithreading, Sun’s dual core UltraSPARC IV processor has revamped Sun’s entire UltraSPARC family of systems enabling enterprises to “scale up” to nearly twice the horsepower of previous Sun systems in the same footprint and featuring better price-performance than IBM and HP offerings. This year also saw the introduction of the AMD Opteron processor into Sun Fire systems. Running 32-bit and 64-bit applications, Sun’s Opteron processor-based server is 45 percent faster than comparable systems and runs Solaris, Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux or Windows operating systems with Microsoft Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) certifications. Sun continued to innovate in blade computing with the new dual processor x86 Sun Fire B200x Blade Server (with Intel Xeon processors) and the N1 Grid Provisioning Server 3.1 Blades Edition. A new Netra 440 server is the industry’s lowest-priced, ruggedized, four-way UltraSPARC server.
• Innovative New Storage Systems. Designed to help mid-market and enterprise customers simplify and improve data management, protection and compliance, Sun’s extensive revamp of its storage systems includes everything from a revolutionary midrange storage system that sets a new standard in scalability and price/performance and a new high-end enterprise storage platform with breakthrough virtualization, replication and data movement capabilities to the Sun StorEdge 5210 NAS device.
• New Subscription Models Make Flexible Computing a Reality. Sun took a lead in Utility Computing with the introduction of subscription-based Sun Preventive Services, Sun Utility Computing for StorEdge Systems, Utility Computing for High-End Grid and a new subscription-based pricing model for Solaris giving customers access to services, storage, software and grids of computing power as easily as buying utility services such as phone, power or water.
• Java Stays Hot as Leading Development Platform in Industry. The Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition 5 (J2SE 5) is the most significant upgrade to the Java platform and programming language since its initial release nearly a decade ago. With its integration into the Solaris 10 operating system and having been made available to other operating systems, Sun Java Enterprise System is the most vendor-neutral development platform in the industry. The Solaris 10 universal support for development tools and Java development platforms capped a year that included the introduction of Sun Java Enterprise System Release 2, Sun Java System RFID Software, and Sun Java Desktop System Release 2 as well as new tools like Sun Java Studio Enterprise, Sun Studio Creator and Sun Studio 8 bringing improved performance and productivity to developers.
• Other announcements included:
  • A new update to Sun Cluster software, Sun’s high availability platform for improved predictability and resilience of business critical applications.
  • The introduction of the Sun N2000 Series Secure Application Switch, a powerful new technology based on Sun’s Nauticus Networks acquisition that delivers the highest performing platform for cross-enterprise application delivery in the industry.
  • The announcement of 20 new Sun Reference Architectures and Solutions including the Solaris optimized data center program that enable customers to gain quicker access to information and improve business intelligence, advance data center efficiency and achieve 70 percent scale out utilization at a fraction of the cost.

For more information on Sun’s 2004 Network Computer events, please visit www.sun.com/news. Sun’s next Network Computing event is slated for early February, 2005.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, Sun Fire, N1, StorEdge, Java and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the US and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company Ltd.

Solaris 10 Becomes the Industry’s First Operating System to Support High Volume 64-Bit Computing

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) and AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that one year into their burgeoning strategic partnership, the companies continue to dramatically change market dynamics. Most recently this was shown with the debut of the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) optimized for AMD64 Technology and enterprise computing at Sun’s quarterly Network Computing ’04 launch. To date, Sun has delivered the most comprehensive AMD processor-based systems family in the industry.

This is the first version of Solaris to support the AMD Opteron processor while running in 64-bit mode, enabling customers to take advantage of the industry’s number one UNIX(R) platform, as well as binary compatibility between 32-bit and 64-bit environments. Solaris 10 is optimized for the performance advantage of AMD64 multi-core technology. In 2005 Sun looks forward to the introduction of dual-core AMD Opteron processors.

In a November 2004 Forrester Research report entitled, “Solaris 10 – Major Value for Sun Customers,” Forrester Vice President Richard Fichera states, “A cornerstone of the announcement is full support for Solaris on x86 architectures, with a focus on support for Sun’s own family of AMD Opteron-based servers . . . benefits to Sun customers are significant. Sun users now have more flexible options for consolidation with containers, the opportunity to easily optimize their applications with DTrace, and the option to jump to a commodity hardware price-performance curve with the AMD-based systems.”

“The results of AMD’s strategic partnership with Sun have exceeded our expectations, as well as those of the industry,” said Dirk Meyer, executive vice president, AMD Computation Products Group. “The combination of Sun’s network computing expertise and the AMD Opteron processor with Direct Connect Architecture has provided customers with unprecedented flexibility and scalability, and taken AMD products into enterprise market segments. It has been an extraordinary year. We expect to set new performance levels next year and positively impact total cost of ownership as we continue to redefine the x86 server and workstation market with a growing AMD64 ecosystem and multi-core technology.”

Sun and AMD: A Winning Combination

With support for Solaris 10, Sun’s AMD Opteron processor-based solutions run the platinum standard for enterprise operating systems including: Solaris 9, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 for 32-bit and 64-bit, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 for 64-bit, SUSE Linux 9 Professional for 64-bit, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Windows 2000 Enterprise Server.

In the year since Sun and AMD joined forces, more than 550 customers in 47 countries have purchased Sun’s AMD Opteron processor-based products including:

• Sun Fire V20z: The dual-processor Sun Fire V20z server delivers high performance, reliability, and scalability in a low-cost, ultra-dense, rack-optimized 1U form factor.
• Sun Fire V40z: The Sun Fire V40z server offers excellent performance and affordable pricing for a four-processor server. Using the HyperTransport Technology, this server provides near-linear scalability and extremely fast throughput for x86 applications.
• Sun Java Workstation W1100z: The single-processor Sun Java Workstation W1100z delivers high-performance computing, workstation-class graphics solutions, high I/O throughput, and the ability to deploy large data sets up to 8 GB in size.
• Sun Java Workstation W2100z: The dual-processor Sun Java Workstation W2100z delivers extreme performance, visualization-class graphics solutions, high I/O throughput, and the ability to deploy large data sets up to 16 GB in size.

These products have set world record benchmarks in a number of categories running the Solaris OS. For details see http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2004-09/sunflash.20040921.6.html.

“We will be using the Sun Java Workstation W2100z on AMD Opteron processors for research on robotics, security, digital mapping and any projects requiring 64-bit computing,” said David Livingston, associate director of computer science research, Carnegie Mellon University. “We believe the Sun Java Workstation W2100z is extremely versatile. Its single architecture will enable us to support simultaneous 32-bit and 64-bit computing with no compromises in performance. It will allow us to maintain our existing x86 infrastructure while enabling a smooth migration to next-generation 64-bit operating systems and applications when required. We look forward to continued innovation from Sun and AMD.”

Other customers who are already reaping the benefits from the OS-independent, record breaking speed of Sun’s systems on AMD Opteron processors include: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, University of Aachen (Germany), Conoco-Phillips, University of Queensland, Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, Old Dominion University and ST Microelectronics, among many other customers.

With more than 700 independent software vendors (ISVs) providing a wide range of applications that are fully optimized and certified to run Solaris on the x86 platform, the Solaris ecosystem is rapidly gaining momentum. Access to Sun’s Software Express for Solaris program is also enabling early previews of the ground-breaking new technologies in Solaris 10 and priming the market for the company’s channel partner communities and customers to leverage Solaris 10 on Sun’s low-cost, high-volume x86 systems.

“We recognized the advantages of the AMD Opteron processor architecture early and have collaborated with our partners at AMD to build optimized systems to deliver value to our customers,” said John Fowler, executive vice president of Sun’s Network Systems Group. “Sun is committed to delivering the best x86 systems for 32- and 64-bit computing and we are in a great position to drive volume. With Sun already offering unparalleled leadership on operating systems and high-performance hardware on AMD Opteron processors, and with the great promise of the forthcoming dual-core processors from AMD, I’m confident we will continue to outpace the competition.”

For more information on the Sun and AMD strategic alliance, please visit: http://www.sun.com/amd

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, Sun Fire, Java and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group.

New Sun Fire V440 Sets Price-Performance Record with Fastest UltraSPARC IIIi Processor Running Solaris 10; Sun Previews Solaris 10 Running on New 32-Thread Niagara Processor

At its Network Computing ’04Q4 (NC04Q4) launch today, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) announced that the best selling 4-way UNIX(R) server in the industry, the Sun Fire(TM) V440, just got better thanks to the new 1.6 GHz UltraSPARC(R) IIIi processor running the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS). Additionally, Sun today previewed the radical new Chip Multithreading (CMT) technology used in its Niagara processor design, due to hit the market in 2006, with 32 high-performance threads on a single piece of silicon.

“The key to unlocking the potential of Sun’s new Niagara processor-based systems will be the ability to manage the highly threaded environment using Solaris,” said Kevin Krewell, senior analyst for Microprocessor Report. “Here, Sun has a significant advantage over the open-source Linux operating system. Niagara pushes the envelope of highly threaded yet power efficient server systems.”

“Solaris 10 will dramatically increase the performance of our existing and future UltraSPARC systems,” said David Yen, executive vice president, scalable systems group, Sun Microsystems, Inc. “From the current design of our UltraSPARC IIIi-based systems all the way to the radical architecture of the Niagara processor, Sun is completely rethinking how systems are architected in order to provide the best application throughput in the most dense and lowest power form factor in the industry.”

Solaris 10 Makes UltraSPARC Faster

The industry leading innovation in the Solaris 10 OS will allow Sun’s existing UltraSPARC system customers to dramatically improve server performance without changing their hardware environment. For example, according to internal benchmarks, customers who upgrade to the Solaris 10 OS on their UltraSPARC systems can benefit from a 47 to 73 percent increase in Web Server performance from the Solaris 9 and Solaris 8 OS, respectively.

Additionally, the new features in Solaris 10 have been optimized for UltraSPARC IV and UltraSPARC IIIi-based systems to further increase system speed, efficiency and overall throughput. Starting at under $12,000 (USD), the new Sun Fire V440, running the Solaris 10 OS, is setting the standard for single threaded application performance:

• Sun Fire V440 record breaking price-performance on Solaris 10: Running Solaris 10 and operating at 1.6 GHz, Sun’s best selling UltraSPARC IIIi Sun Fire V440 server achieved world record price-performance among all TPC-H@100GB submissions(2). This is a price/performance improvement of more than 32 percent over the previous V440 submission(3). At $54,276.55 (USD), the Sun Fire V440 server offers the lowest total cost of ownership of any 4-way submission at 100GB by 15 percent. In second place is the 1.28GHz Sun Fire V440 at $67,704 (USD) (3).

Early results are also demonstrating significant performance enhancements for the Solaris 10 OS running on Sun’s dual-core UltraSPARC IV-based systems:

• Sun Fire V490 leads the data warehouse pack with Solaris 10: The 4-way Sun Fire V490 server achieved world record price/performance running Solaris 10 on the 1-TB TPC-H benchmark, demonstrating the highest performance data warehousing and database architecture at this price point. The Sun Fire V490 server delivered 2,958 QphH@1000GB at a price performance of US$52/QphH@1000GB. (1)

(1)The Sun Fire V490 system delivered 2,959 QphH@1000GB at a price performance of 52 US$/QphH @1000GB with a scheduled availability date of 1/16/05.
(2)The Sun Fire 1.593GHz V440 system delivered 2,882 QphH@100GB at a price performance of 19 US$/QphH @100GB with a scheduled general availability date of 11/16/04.
(3)The Sun Fire 1.28GHz V440 system delivered 2428 QphH@100GB at a price performance of 28 US$/QphH @100GB with availability on 11/07/03.
(4) The HP ProLiant DL 760 G2 8P system delivered 4224 QphH@100GB at a price performance of 43 US$/QphH @100GB with a scheduled availability date of 8/15/03.
TPC-H, QphH and $/QphH are trademarks of the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). Additional information on the TPC-H benchmark can be found at www.tpc.org

Tune into Sun’s NC04Q4 web event at www.sun.com/nc and visit our online press kit (http://sun.com/presskits/networkcomputing04q4/) to view all press releases and detailed product launch background.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun Logo, Solaris, Sun Fire and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.